I'm in basically the same situation.
I've a 13.3" VAIO (the ones with two video cards) that I bought two years ago for light gaming on the road, and reading PDFs when playing pen&paper RPGs. I no longer play games on it, as I've a full PC beside my TV that I use for an HTPS + PC Gaming (although generally play games on consoles more than PC). I also started getting annoyed carrying around the VAIO + some core rulebooks (it still is easier to read the paper version than to open the laptop every time you need to lookup an obscure rule).
The nVidia video card (GeForce 8400M, discreet) finally died (as a result of that whole bad-fab fiasco, mine was one of the affected laptops but was imported from the US to Canada, as such, not worth the shipping and hassle to get it replaced), so it's running off of the onboard Intel video card.
I figure in about 6 months to a year, I'll be trading this in for a netbook as well (maybe sooner), as that's basically all I use my notebook for now anyways.
Either that or I'll wait and see if Apple finally releases their Mac Tablet, and possibly get one of those.
Plus, the selection of movies blows away anything that Blockbuster has -- especially horror, documentaries, and classics if you're into that sort of thing.
Blockbuster (or basically any B&M entertainment rental store) is really only good for an inexpensive source of the latest video games which one would promptly make a backup of.
The temporal difference between the effort to build such an AI and 500 bucks seems a little too great.
Sure, because nobody's spending hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development for the 1-million dollar purse in the various X-Prize competitions (launch vehicles, lunar landers, autonomous vehicles, genomics, etc)
The irony that Orwell's 1984 describes "Children Heroes" who snitch on grown-ups is tasting sweeter with every passing moment.
Except that our world is sliding closer and closer to a Brave New World than into 1984 (c'mon, it's 2009 already).
We as a people [in the western world] are taught to be complacent and kept in a "healthy" state of mind by being force-fed pleasure from a very early age.
There aren't the thought-police running around selectively re-educating people who go astray, no, instead we're sent to a shrink and spoonfed drugs until we're a normal, functioning member of society again. We're provided copious amounts of mindless drivel (reality TV) to appeal to our senses, while not really providing any benefit to us at all. Beyond that, sex is absolutely everywhere. Sure, it's frowned upon in some circles, but that doesn't make it go away, and there's more and more of it plasted on billboards, in magazines, in movies and television, every day.
Orwell's future is a relic of the Cold War, instead it is Huxley's vision of the future that is proving to be a reality, and that's not a good thing.
Why... WHY!?!?!?
Now, for the rest of the day, I'll have images of him sitting at a table with Michael Wesson with a mojito to his left and a bucket of KFC to his right, saying "At least I got chicken..."
It was from my own experience having been stuck in that MMO La La Land (FFXI) that I provided that response.
When tools like spellcast came out, I was one of the ones who traded the clicky-click rock-smoking for typey-type powder snorting of tool development and advancement.
Also, having traded drug addictions in the past for more socially acceptable addictions (higher intake of nicotine and alcohol), it's still just trading one addiction for another at the end of the day. People just look down on you a little less for it.
I was even thinking maybe Blizzard should have a WoW server where bots are allowed.. In a few mins I'm set to read development economics with my warrior churning in the background.
If Blizzard were to allow such, I don't think it would really help the situation at all.
Instead of people running around clicking buttons, they'd have their bots running around pretending to click buttons, sure. All the while people would be learning how to tweak their bot to make it run that much better than the other guys.
Something similar (while entirely against game rules) happened with FFXI. A plugin (spellcast, iirc) for windower (the third-party DX-grabber that allowed FFXI to run in windowed mode) had people constantly upgrading and trading new/updated INI files to get their gear to switch out in more optimal ways.
As to your points:
Achievement tendency?
Replaced with having the (provably) most efficient bot...
Compulsory collection tendency?
Replaced with finding new tweaks/fixes for your bot code...
Gradually increased challenge tendency?
Each tweak gets harder and harder to find, and generally has smaller and smaller impact on overall bot performance...
Grouping/raid tendency? Well, not, but still.
Forums and chats to discuss new code-blocks, new optimizations, etc.
While I'm not saying that this shift from mindless key-clicking to mindless copy-pasting new sections of code (as many will do just that, only the truly innovative, who today create all those gear spreadsheets and skill trees) is a bad thing, it isn't necessarily a good thing either.
Something is happening out there. Something BIG.:-)
Shh... don't let them know you're on to them, or you'll [be reassigned] just like that other guy who I will neither confirm nor deny being an associate of...
Little titles like Audiosurf do a far better job of using new hardware to make a new gameplay experience.
Or Mirror's Edge, using the PhysX engine on nVidia cards to provide a much more vibrant and beautiful world to run around in (due to the tattered, bullet-ridden curtains/flags flapping in the wind, or the way that glass windows shatter when shot/jumped through).
If everyone could hack into any person's brain and have sex with whoever they want, then what kind of society would that be like? On one hand, some super hot chicks are going to be pretty busy, but on the other hand, you would be reprogrammed periodically to think that bigfoot was hot.
If you're having sex with someone's brain, wouldn't that make the intelligent, clever, funny, and/or witty people of the world (not necessarily those with physically attractive shells) the more likely candidates for sex?
Logically this would be the case, as now the attraction would be at a level beyond the flesh.
Finally, a way to get geeks laid! (except, of course, for the ones that are socially inept, they're still (not getting) screwed...
Did you know Sadness is and has always been one of the seven deadly sins? Nowadays, they call it "Sloth".
Sloth isn't sadness. It's laziness.
Eternal sadness can be viewed as the reward for following the path of the sins, just as eternal happiness is the reward for pursuing the 7 virtues.
Slashdot Mirror
"Yesh, I'm looking for a Shara Connor. Trebek'sh motheh would like to have a threeshome with her and I."
There, FTFY
I'm in basically the same situation.
I've a 13.3" VAIO (the ones with two video cards) that I bought two years ago for light gaming on the road, and reading PDFs when playing pen&paper RPGs. I no longer play games on it, as I've a full PC beside my TV that I use for an HTPS + PC Gaming (although generally play games on consoles more than PC). I also started getting annoyed carrying around the VAIO + some core rulebooks (it still is easier to read the paper version than to open the laptop every time you need to lookup an obscure rule).
The nVidia video card (GeForce 8400M, discreet) finally died (as a result of that whole bad-fab fiasco, mine was one of the affected laptops but was imported from the US to Canada, as such, not worth the shipping and hassle to get it replaced), so it's running off of the onboard Intel video card.
I figure in about 6 months to a year, I'll be trading this in for a netbook as well (maybe sooner), as that's basically all I use my notebook for now anyways.
Either that or I'll wait and see if Apple finally releases their Mac Tablet, and possibly get one of those.
Plus, the selection of movies blows away anything that Blockbuster has -- especially horror, documentaries, and classics if you're into that sort of thing.
Blockbuster (or basically any B&M entertainment rental store) is really only good for an inexpensive source of the latest video games which one would promptly make a backup of.
Amazon?
The temporal difference between the effort to build such an AI and 500 bucks seems a little too great.
Sure, because nobody's spending hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development for the 1-million dollar purse in the various X-Prize competitions (launch vehicles, lunar landers, autonomous vehicles, genomics, etc)
Oh, wait...
It shows in the updated reading list that your school has never read 1984 and has always been assigned I Am the Cheese.
Are you kidding? We'll never be assigned that book.
I Am the Cheese was written by a man from Oceania.
Haven't you heard? That's how we make word's plural on the Internet's.
There, FTFY
The irony that Orwell's 1984 describes "Children Heroes" who snitch on grown-ups is tasting sweeter with every passing moment.
Except that our world is sliding closer and closer to a Brave New World than into 1984 (c'mon, it's 2009 already).
We as a people [in the western world] are taught to be complacent and kept in a "healthy" state of mind by being force-fed pleasure from a very early age.
There aren't the thought-police running around selectively re-educating people who go astray, no, instead we're sent to a shrink and spoonfed drugs until we're a normal, functioning member of society again. We're provided copious amounts of mindless drivel (reality TV) to appeal to our senses, while not really providing any benefit to us at all. Beyond that, sex is absolutely everywhere. Sure, it's frowned upon in some circles, but that doesn't make it go away, and there's more and more of it plasted on billboards, in magazines, in movies and television, every day.
Orwell's future is a relic of the Cold War, instead it is Huxley's vision of the future that is proving to be a reality, and that's not a good thing.
Security through obscurity doesn't work by itself .
There, FTFY
oh yeah and Bruce Campbell had better be in it!
He'd make an ecxellent Leeroy Jenkins!
Why... WHY!?!?!?
Now, for the rest of the day, I'll have images of him sitting at a table with Michael Wesson with a mojito to his left and a bucket of KFC to his right, saying "At least I got chicken..."
Which is exactly what he would do, after not being deterred by the noise
Problem solved, no more dead-good-bats, and no more bat-bullies
It was from my own experience having been stuck in that MMO La La Land (FFXI) that I provided that response.
When tools like spellcast came out, I was one of the ones who traded the clicky-click rock-smoking for typey-type powder snorting of tool development and advancement.
Also, having traded drug addictions in the past for more socially acceptable addictions (higher intake of nicotine and alcohol), it's still just trading one addiction for another at the end of the day. People just look down on you a little less for it.
I was even thinking maybe Blizzard should have a WoW server where bots are allowed.. In a few mins I'm set to read development economics with my warrior churning in the background.
If Blizzard were to allow such, I don't think it would really help the situation at all.
Instead of people running around clicking buttons, they'd have their bots running around pretending to click buttons, sure. All the while people would be learning how to tweak their bot to make it run that much better than the other guys.
Something similar (while entirely against game rules) happened with FFXI. A plugin (spellcast, iirc) for windower (the third-party DX-grabber that allowed FFXI to run in windowed mode) had people constantly upgrading and trading new/updated INI files to get their gear to switch out in more optimal ways.
As to your points:
Achievement tendency?
Replaced with having the (provably) most efficient bot...
Compulsory collection tendency?
Replaced with finding new tweaks/fixes for your bot code...
Gradually increased challenge tendency?
Each tweak gets harder and harder to find, and generally has smaller and smaller impact on overall bot performance...
Grouping/raid tendency? Well, not, but still.
Forums and chats to discuss new code-blocks, new optimizations, etc.
While I'm not saying that this shift from mindless key-clicking to mindless copy-pasting new sections of code (as many will do just that, only the truly innovative, who today create all those gear spreadsheets and skill trees) is a bad thing, it isn't necessarily a good thing either.
Something is happening out there. Something BIG. :-)
Shh... don't let them know you're on to them, or you'll [be reassigned] just like that other guy who I will neither confirm nor deny being an associate of...
I'm not going to lie. Beyond anything, I want to play a game of Tragic: The Garnering.
C'MON! JUST ONE. SINGLE. GAME!
Is that where you RP Ben Affleck's career?
Oh, that Ben Affleck...
No, he told them not to tread on him, true story...
Usually, no. They die of drug abuse.
Or cancer...
Too soon?
Little titles like Audiosurf do a far better job of using new hardware to make a new gameplay experience.
Or Mirror's Edge, using the PhysX engine on nVidia cards to provide a much more vibrant and beautiful world to run around in (due to the tattered, bullet-ridden curtains/flags flapping in the wind, or the way that glass windows shatter when shot/jumped through).
If everyone could hack into any person's brain and have sex with whoever they want, then what kind of society would that be like? On one hand, some super hot chicks are going to be pretty busy, but on the other hand, you would be reprogrammed periodically to think that bigfoot was hot.
If you're having sex with someone's brain, wouldn't that make the intelligent, clever, funny, and/or witty people of the world (not necessarily those with physically attractive shells) the more likely candidates for sex?
Logically this would be the case, as now the attraction would be at a level beyond the flesh.
Finally, a way to get geeks laid! (except, of course, for the ones that are socially inept, they're still (not getting) screwed...
Bite my shiny organic psychological disorder!
That was a drop in replacement. It's supposed to run a little faster.
It does, I had one of these things (traded up a 4.77MHz 8088 to a 8MHz 8088 to a 12MHz v20)
Ahh, the good old days, when men were men and geeks upgraded their ram by swapping out dozens of ICs.
I know the Samsung T240M supports 1900x1200 for sure. But that's 24 inches.
Unfortunately that wouldn't work for him either. Full 1080p is 1920x1080
Did you know Sadness is and has always been one of the seven deadly sins? Nowadays, they call it "Sloth".
Sloth isn't sadness. It's laziness.
Eternal sadness can be viewed as the reward for following the path of the sins, just as eternal happiness is the reward for pursuing the 7 virtues.
If you are truly paranoid though, you extract your own tin and make it into foil then fold the foil into hats. Its the only way to be sure.
No, the only way to be sure is to nuke the site from orbit. Yours is a distant second, though.
People just don't understand you, do they?